Fine foot: Alejandro Grimaldo celebrates his winning goal to make it 1-0.
picture alliance/dpa

Xabi Alonso was left with another traffic-related change. Wirtz and Palacios, who were taken out of the line-up at short notice in the 3-2 win in Dortmund due to travel difficulties, started again in place of Tella and Andrich in the duel between the league’s two strongest teams. However, Xabi Alonso still had to do without a top performer at short notice, Tah was out due to a cold. Aleix Garcia moved into the starting line-up in his place, which meant a switch from a four-man to a three-man chain. Kovar was also allowed to play in goal instead of Hradecky.

Mainz coach Bo Henriksen only made one change after the 2-0 win against VfL Bochum – and that was due to injury: Jenz had to miss due to muscular problems. Defending for him was Hanche-Olsen, who stood out early with a rescue act: Schick had already turned around Zentner after a Caci mistake and brought the ball onto the goal from an acute angle, where Hanche-Olsen was on the ball a tad ahead of Palacios and the early one The brilliant Mainz deficit prevented (7th).

Leverkusen superior – Zentner keeps Mainz in the game

At this point, his team had already had to make a change: after just over 60 seconds, Burkardt stood in for a running duel and grabbed his left thigh, which he had already injured in the game against FC Bayern in December. Without him, Mainz basically couldn’t function on offense and relied on extremely deep defense. That worked quite well, but despite the overwhelming visual superiority, Leverkusen only managed semi-dangerous shots through Hincapie (23′) and Schick (30′).

It wasn’t until shortly before the half-time whistle that things got really tricky for Mainz on two occasions, but they were able to rely on Zentner: The keeper parried against Wirtz (41′) and Grimaldo (45’+2) and kept the score 0-0 at the break.

Shortly after the break, the Mainz goalkeeper also had no chance: Grimaldo took a free kick from almost 18 meters from a half-right position perfectly over the wall into the right corner – a very impressive goal (48th). The guests, who until then had been practically non-existent offensively, almost responded directly, Kovar parried a Lee shot and Caci stumbled the shot past the empty goal from an acute angle (51st). Shortly afterwards, Kovar had to use his skills against a deflected Sano attempt (57th).

Henriksen flies in stoppage time

Mainz had visibly woken up, the game was now much more open and offered opportunities on both sides: While Wirtz first got stuck with a long-range shot to Zentner (61′) and later with a shot from the save by Bell (73′), Kovar was up the other side against a shot from substitute Weiper on the post (71′). In the final phase, Leverkusen regained more and more control of the game – and Mainz was able to thank the brilliant Zentner for staying in the game: The keeper showed the next two strong ones against Frimpong (81′) and substitute Tella (83′). Parades.

But it was no longer enough for the guests to compensate. Instead, head coach Henriksen received a yellow-red card in stoppage time, which means that the Rheinhessen coach will be missing from the bench against Union Berlin next Sunday (3:30 p.m.). Leverkusen is aiming for its eighth win in a row against Borussia Mönchengladbach on Saturday evening (6.30 p.m.).